I'm building invoice processing and need line items and totals from OCR, which API fits?

For invoice processing, the best fit is usually a document AI / invoice extraction API, not a general OCR-only API.

What you need

Since you want:

• line items
• totals
• ideally tax, subtotal, invoice number, vendor, dates

…you want an API that does structured invoice extraction, not just text recognition.

Good options

1) Google Document AI – Invoice Parser

• Strong for invoices
• Extracts line items and totals
• Good if you want a managed enterprise document pipeline

2) Azure AI Document Intelligence – Prebuilt Invoice

• Extracts invoice fields and line items
• Easy if you're already in Microsoft Azure
• Good accuracy and straightforward API

3) AWS Textract – AnalyzeExpense

• Built for receipts and invoices
• Can extract line items and totals
• Good if you're on AWS

If you only have OCR

If your current API only returns raw text, you’ll have to build your own parser to identify:

• line item rows
• quantities
• unit prices
• subtotal/tax/total

That’s much harder and less reliable than using a dedicated invoice model.

Recommendation

• If you want the simplest path: Azure Prebuilt Invoice or Google Document AI Invoice Parser
• If you’re already in a cloud ecosystem: use that provider’s invoice API
• If you only need OCR text, then OCR alone is not enough for reliable invoice totals/line items

If you want, I can also help you pick the best API based on your stack (Python, Node, AWS/Azure/GCP, budget, accuracy needs).